CHAPTER ELEVEN
RAVEN
The leather chair creaks beneath my weight as I sit opposite Ezekiel’s desk, the blood drying on my clothes making the expensive upholstery the least of my concerns.
Across from me, the Don lowers himself into his chair, folding his hands on the polished timber between us before fixing me with a stare that has reduced stronger men than me to stammering apologies.
I’ve never been one of them.
I hold his gaze without so much as a blink, letting the silence stretch between us, neither of us in any hurry to fill it.
That’s the thing about men like us. Words are rarely wasted, especially when they’re spoken behind closed doors.
Outside these walls, he may be the Don and I may be one of his most trusted silencers, but in here there’s no audience to perform for.
No footsoldiers waiting for instructions.
No members of the outfit hanging on every word.
Just two men raised by the same monster.
The stare lingers for another few seconds before something shifts almost imperceptibly in his expression. Not approval. Just simple understanding.
He looks away, reaching for the crystal decanter resting in the corner of his desk, pouring himself two fingers of whiskey before he looks up from his task at hand, then thinks better before offering me one. I don’t drink, and he knows why.
The glass remains in his hand as he settles back into his chair, the amber liquid catching the light from the desk lamp between us.
“What do you have for me?”
I lean back in the chair, dragging a hand over my jaw. We filled him in on the drive back from the docks. He already knows how the operation had unfolded. What he didn’t know, what nobody knew, was what the doctor had said to me.
“As usual. Nothing concrete,” I admit. “The fucker spoke in riddles the entire time.”
Ezekiel says nothing, waiting me out. When it becomes clear I’m not volunteering anything else, he finally speaks.
“They like to do that,” he says, swirling the whiskey around his glass. “It’s their code. Nothing is ever easy with them. Everything is wrapped in metaphors, riddles…half-truths.” His eyes settle back on mine. “So, tell me what he said.”
“He said a bunch of shit about kings. At first I thought he was referring to you or Titan, but then he mentioned queens and inheritance.” Ezekiel’s expression hardens, then he mutters something under his breath before taking a sip of whiskey.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah.” I lean forward, resting my forearms on my knees.
“He said…everyone watches the crown, but nobody watches the spare.” The room falls quiet, and I watch, noticing the invisible cogs turning in Ezekiel’s head, deciphering the same jargon I spent the entire car ride over here trying to figure out.
I’m almost certain I know what the doc was implying, and that thought isn’t even remotely settling.
“What the fuck was he doing down there?”
“Reconstructing faces.” His brows furrow in confusion.
Underground surgical facilities aren’t anything new to us.
We’ve torn through enough of them over the years, only for another one to surface somewhere else a few months later.
“I think that’s how they’ve stayed untraceable,” I continue.
“He implied that there was someone else pulling the strings. While we’ve been focused on the crown, we’ve missed the one standing behind it. ”
“Seraphine,” Ezekiel mutters, and I nod in agreement.
“Given what he was doing down there, I’d say we’ve been looking for the wrong person. Seraphine isn’t Seraphine anymore, and that fuckhead was responsible.”
Ezekiel places the glass on the table in front of him as his attention drifts somewhere beyond the room. His jaw works once, his mind turning everything over. Every name and face we’ve crossed paths with since this all started.
“Access,” he says almost to himself.
“Exactly.”
“A new face doesn’t just help someone disappear, Z. It gets them one step closer to being invited in. It earns trust they never should’ve had, and puts them in rooms they’d never have walked into wearing their old skin.”
“She wants a new life,” he murmurs, his blue gaze settling on me. “To start over.”
I give a slow shake of my head. That would be the first place Ezekiel’s mind goes. Mine never has. He’s spent too long staring into the darkest parts of humanity to believe people simply walk away from that kind of life. Yet, he tries to find the positives. Not me. People are poison.
“Or revenge.”
The words hang heavy between us, and the room grows colder beneath their weight.
“Say nothing,” he says, rising to his feet. I follow suit, instinctively straightening my leather jacket, but hating the way the stiff leather crinkles from Danny’s dried blood.
“If there’s a mole, the moment any of these words leave this office, they’ll know we’ve started asking the right questions.”
I nod, reaching for the door before stopping.
“Z?” I clear my throat, hating how vulnerable I sound.
“Yeah?”
“I should have paid closer attention. Danny wouldn’t be hurt if it wasn’t for me.”
Ezekiel walks over, stopping when he’s but an arm’s length away.
“Danny knew exactly what he was signing up for the moment he walked through those doors,” he says, his voice calm and unwavering. “We all did.”
The words aren’t cruel. They’re the honest cost of wearing our colors.
“There’s only one certainty in this life, Raven.
” His gaze doesn’t leave mine as he reaches out and places a hand on my shoulder.
“Death. It’s the only thing every man, woman and child born into this world has in common.
Everything after your first breath is a bonus.
We just happen to spend our borrowed time living a little closer to the edge than most.” His expression softens, if only for a fraction.
“You did good today. You brought your men home.”
Your men.
“Not all of them whole.” My fingers curl into a fist before I realize I’m doing it.
His expression doesn’t change. “You did your job. He did his. Katia will do hers. Since when did you start mourning men before they’re dead. Or at all, for that matter? Don’t answer that. I won’t even begin to unpack that shit.”
He’s right. There have only been four things I’ve cared about in this world.
My sister, my home, my job… And the woman who has consumed years of my life, despite the fact I’m not convinced she was ever a person at all.
A faint smirk touches the corner of his mouth. “Go on. Go back to that creepy as fuck graveyard you insist on calling home, and let my surgeon do what she’s better at than the rest of us.”
***
The iron gates groan behind me as I pull my SUV beneath the old maple tree by my house, killing the engine and letting the silence of the cemetery swallow me whole.
I don’t move. My hands remain draped over the steering wheel while my eyes wander across the rows of snow-covered headstones disappearing into darkness.
Ezekiel’s words circle my mind like vultures.
The only thing promised is death.
Out here, surrounded by unreadable names etched into stone, it’s impossible to argue with him.
Death is the only vow this world never breaks.
The only thread binding every living soul together.
It waits beneath my feet, hangs in the air I breathe, and whispers through the rows of forgotten lives surrounding my home.
It’s probably why I’ve always preferred the company of the dead.
The living are unpredictable. They lie. They betray.
They pretend their asses off so convincingly they eventually forget where the performance ends and the person begins.
The dead don’t have that luxury. Every secret they ever carried is buried with them.
Every promise they ever broke no longer matters.
I climb the worn timber steps into my house, the porch groaning beneath my boots before I push open the front door.
The familiar scent of incense greets me immediately, soaked so deeply into the timber that I doubt even a full renovation could strip it from the walls.
I’ve tried. More than once. At this point, it’s as much a part of this place as the creaking floorboards and the bodies that frame these grounds.
I toss the keys onto my entry table, the dull clink echoing through the otherwise empty house.
The leather jacket slides from my shoulders, landing over the back of a dining chair with a heavy thud.
I reach for it. My eyes catch on the blood staining the black leather sleeves, my fingers tightening around the leather before slowly releasing it.
I should throw it in the wash, but I can’t. Instead, I leave it where it is.
Cameron’s words refuse to loosen their grip on my thoughts.
People die. Ideas don’t.
Everyone watches the crown.
The bastard died with a smile on his face because he knew he’d left me with a clusterfuck to unravel. For the first time in years, I don’t know if I’ve been chasing a woman…or a lie.
The shrill vibration of my phone against the kitchen bench cuts through the silence.
Unknown number.
I stare at the screen for a long moment before reaching for it.
“Yeah?”
A low chuckle crackles down the line. “You always answer the phone like someone pissed in your Cheerios?”
The voice is older, weathered by cigarettes and time. It still takes me less than a second to place it.
“I didn’t think you were still alive.”
“Most people don’t.”
The line falls silent. Not because either of us has run out of things to say, but because in our world, men who disappear are usually supposed to stay that way.
Snow falls steadily beyond the kitchen window, the flakes catching in the security lights that line the cemetery.
I turn away from the glass, absentmindedly straightening one of the framed photographs hanging in the hallway before making my way into the living room.
I kneel in front of the fireplace, stacking a couple of split logs over the kindling before striking a match.
The flame catches slowly, crackling as it spreads through the timber, filling the room with the familiar scent of burning cedar.
“I heard you’ve been keeping yourself busy.”
“I heard you retired.”
“I did.”
I ease back onto the couch, resting my forearms on my knees as I watch the fire begin to take, growing stronger with each passing second.
The flames lick at the cedar, popping loudly enough to fill the silence Thomas leaves between each sentence.
There’s only one reason he’d be calling me after all these years, and it sure as hell isn’t to reminisce.
He’d worked for Titan for decades, long before I was old enough to understand what men like him actually did for a living.
By the time I came along, Thomas’s name was already a name spoken with quiet respect, the kind earned by surviving a profession where most men ended in shallow graves.
Some said he retired. Others thought he’d simply started working for himself, taking on the occasional contract when the price, or reason, was right.
Whatever the truth, one thing never changed.
Thomas Sterling only ever picked up the phone when someone was about to die.
“What can I do for you, Sterling?”
He doesn’t answer immediately as I listen to nothing but the slow rasp of his breathing.
“You remember that favor you owe me?”
My grip tightens on the phone, because I knew there was a reason behind this call.
“I remember.” My finger drags over the old scar running across my palm. Fifteen years old. One stupid mistake that almost cost me my life. One man standing between me and Titan’s wrath.
“Figured you would. Anyways, kid. I’m gonna need to call it in.”
“What do you need?” Another measured pause fills the line, before he finally says, “I need you to do a job.”
There it is.
No explanation.
No pleasantries.
Nothing. Just a friendly debt owed to a not so friendly contract killer.
I push myself off the couch, unable to sit still any longer.
My fingers trail across the mantle as I pass, the wood worn smooth by years of habit, before stopping at the window to watch the fresh snow settle beyond the glass in slow, patient silence.
I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose, knowing exactly where this conversation is headed.
It’s been a long day, and I’m exhausted in the people department, though I know better than to let myself appear weak or vulnerable in any way to a man like Thomas.
Every debt ends the same way. With someone in the ground.
And the older the debt… The heavier the body.